


lady never tells

by inkandbone



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:28:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27784513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkandbone/pseuds/inkandbone
Summary: when he needs help, she answers.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Original Character(s), Din Djarin/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 15





	1. marketplace battle

**Author's Note:**

> ello!!! mando x oc with romantic and platonic history??? tragic backstory??? that's me. all will be revealed.....

Tatooine is an unforgiving planet of lost souls and those looking to be lost. The surface is cruel, sand and rock and heat, all boiling together and bringing little benefit other than dehydration and exposure, death in the deserts, skeletons strewn like Boonta Eve celebratory garlands. Not that they ever celebrated that anymore.

The beginning of the Empire those fateful twenty five years ago, no one really knew what it was like before it all. Before the Clone Wars, there was eternal peace through the galaxy, there were no Separatist extremists nor were there Republic dreamers who caused a war through their own greed and idiocy. There were Jedi in their robes and their weapons that glowed in the dark. There was peace in the capital and there were good people.

Everything had changed since then.

I swipe my fingers over the hologram beamed in front of me, sliding the location of the tiny red blip a good few clicks east. The sun is beating down hard enough for it to seep through the worn canvas dyed green above my head, through the pale stone walls, but I blink through the beams and continue on my mission. I turn the entire display around and click my fingers at the Duros and Rodian pair that have settled into their own mild conversation in Huttese. 

“Here.” I gesture at the table. The red blip is their target- I’m the huntress. Well, I didn’t go out and do it anymore, I hadn’t for a good five years, but I found their chain codes and linked their travel passes to calculate locations and hack into manual databases that held most information. Tatooine was still a very Empire-infested planet, where such values didn’t just fade like they could on Naboo, or Glee Anselm. The people here enjoyed the order and the strict regimes. It often opened more doors for illegal bounty hunters and often a lot of illegal trading- live or dead things. “He’s on Saleucami. Ganga Swamps, on the west side of the planet.” I turn the display with a gesture of my hand again.

The Duros leans forward, pulling out his tracking fob to log the data on. I show him the chain code and he notes it down with slim, blue fingers.

“That’s him? On his own? Seems like easy prey.” The Rodian, Magi, mutters. I raise an eyebrow. It’s a challenge on whether he believes me or not. He winces as the sun shifts through a spot in the dull canvas above us. This was a pretty secret hut for bounty hunters from the Guild only. The woman who ran the stall, Kima, let me do this part. I’d known her as an acquaintance for the better part of four years.

“You can believe me or not, Magi.” I lean forward on the dull iron table. “I’ve never led you wrong before, have I?” He gives a huff of a laugh and shakes his head, no. “Exactly. Be careful, New Republic logs say he’s slippery for a Mythrol.”

“How slippery?”

  
“Three counts of prison break.” Another laugh. “Good luck, you two. Bring me back a little something when you get him, yeah?” Magi claps me on the shoulder.

“You know we will, Seer.” I bite my lip and wave a hand at the door. “See you.”

They disappear through the shroud of red-black curtain separating me from the paths of the market. I wait until they are gone, taking the information drive from the table. If people came in and wanted to take what I have, they’d have to wait until I appeared. Then again, they probably wouldn’t last long. I slip through the empty archway into Kima’s stall. She’s bartering with an age-old Cerean who doesn’t seem to want to give up the new barrel that Kima’s trying to give away for a price way too high to be respectable. I clear my throat and slide up beside her. The Cerean glances at me, once, before handing off the right credits.

“Ah, girl, you are too much trouble.” Kima juggles the silver money in her hands before throwing it into the metal box she keeps hidden from customers. “You don’t need to intimidate, they won’t come back. Just smile and encourage.”

“You’re too kind to let me keep staying here when I scare away your customers, Kima,” I croon, leaning my head on her shoulder. She beats me away with a wrinkled hand. She was once Pantoran, I think, but somehow, the ice-weathered woman landed on this hot hellhole near the Core. Now her skin is just white rather than blue. 

“Well, you know you can leave without telling me, go from here to there. I will stay here always.” Kima pats her stall’s ancient wooden pillar without worrying it might crumble on our heads. “This is my home, yours is out in the galaxy. That’s why you help people search for what you once had.”

“Kima…” I mutter. “Please don’t give me a therapy session off the back of a very successful bounty payout and a successful sale.” Kima clicks her tongue and starts calling out to the people passing the booth. I relax against the back wall of the stall and flick my vibroblade from its sheath beneath my arm. I keep a vibroblade in one holster and my favourite blaster in the other. It’s a new-ish DH-17, painted mostly in black with the hint of silver here and there. I have a matching one in my pack. A pair normally suited me. Nowadays I had no use for my rifle, an MK sniper. It sat alongside my running-away pack in the hut.

I play with the blade for a few minutes, listening to the near rumble of ships coming in to land at the space ports. The sky is dotted with them often enough, this is Mos Espa, after all, the one place worth visiting on this god-forsaken planet. I pick my nails with it, absolutely uninterested in the practised scam Kima was currently trying on some white-coated Chiss holding the chain to a collared Twi’lek at his side. I glance at the woman but she seems pretty pleased to be at his side, shoving herself all over him while Kima tries to push off a tiny electric blaster for double its normal price.

There’s a flash of something in the crowds ahead of the stall- metal, I think- and I wince, blinking away the glare. Someone must have made a worthy purchase. I could have sworn that gleam was as bright as-

_ Beskar _ .

I straighten immediately.

I’ve never seen a Mandalorian around these parts. Maybe they’re wearing stolen armour. Maybe I should peel it off their dead corpse. I freeze, ducking down low. Kima pays little attention but seems to stiffen a little, her pink eyes flickering around the market square. Maybe I know who that is.

I dip back into the hut and disappear.

It’s a tactic of mine; a skill of mine. I can often find places in the crowd to just fade away into, slipping between bodies and under buildings to completely dissolve my enemy’s line of sight. My enemy right now is pounding through the market at breakneck speed. I dodge past Kima and leap through the curtain, bumping shoulders with a Kiffar as I go. They shout at me but I’m too quick, and slippery as a Mon Calamari. Arms and legs brush me but I’m diverting my path as rapidly as possible.

Left, right, then straight forwards through a triple stack of food stalls, all sizzling with fresh bantha and nerf on huge fryers and blackened grills. Their scents entice me to stay a little longer but I leap through the platoons of chefs, much to their distaste as I send some things flying. I continue. This is a practise I have not played in a while.

I pass a couple of familiar faces but am too far gone to even exchange a greeting. Every turn I make there is already the flash of beskar in mirrors and glass. I dash into an alleyway. 

The ground beneath my feet is solid, dusted with sand, but it is sturdy and I feel every footstep I make on it. And then the ones that appear out of nowhere from in front of me.

I collide with a beskar chest at breakneck speed; I probably would have broken my nose if it weren’t for the off way I hit him. His arms go around me and I yelp, feeling him throw me towards the ground, utilising his strength in one mighty swing. Fuck! I thrash, managing my arms beneath his and reversing his grip with the straight of my left arm. He fumbles.

I skid beneath him and leap to my feet.

Mando stares back at me. His armour is new and fresh, his helmet still the same, but his armour gleams in the sun with no hesitation. There’s even a signet on his left shoulder, but I don’t give him a millisecond to speak.

I launch myself at him. My blade flips into my hand with age-old familiarity and I go for his throat first. His arms come up and defend, bumping me backwards. I feel my boots skid along the dust-coated ground and note the unreliability of my grip. Perfect. 

Mando shifts, going to raise his hands in defence. I swipe his feet, leaving him stumbling, skidding, until he can’t find his grip and goes hard down on the floor. A violent thud follows, bouncing off the walls of the alleyway. I grin, leaping atop him like one would ride a blurrg. Rough and hard. He grunts.

“Mando.” My vibroblade shivers at the exposed line of his throat. It’s tan and oh-so forbidden I can taste the satisfaction on my lips. If I just tilted that god-awful bucket of his a little, he’d be exposed to the world. 

“Shiha, please,” he grunts, arms pinned down by my knees. “Just listen to me.” I press my blade further against him, nicking the tip against the slim line of skin. It drops with a bead of blood. “Shiha. Don’t.”

“What’s stopping me, Mando?” I don’t expect the sudden bump of his beskar-clad thighs, though, and I go sailing through the air. He outweighs me by plenty, but I’m quick enough to evade his escape and leap atop him like a Wookiee. I slap my palm on his helmet and he groans, leaning forward to tip me onto the dust.

“Shiha! Maker damnit-” I kick at his exposed crotch and he goes down, onto his knees with a huff. “ _ Fuck _ .” He doesn’t swear.

“Mando,” I mutter. “You have no right to be here.” He grabs my wrists and knocks my blade to the ground beside me. He’s hovering against me, chest heaving in an arousing sort of way. I stare at the blackness of his visor, speechless when I realise he still wears it all. He’s bearing the mark of a clan, too, and he’s here, in front of me, when he’s probably taken his helmet off for his wife. I spit and hiss, thrashing until I can’t be bothered any more. “Am I your quarry?”

“No.”

“Being a man of little words has never suited you less than it does in this situation,” I growl, relaxing under his grip. People passing the alleyway probably wouldn’t blink twice in our direction. “Speak, now, or I’ll kill you.”

“I need your help.” 

I laugh aloud. It’s cruel, really, and it’s a rough, horrible laugh, but I do it anyway. He is a hypocrite and he is an idiot for coming here and thinking I would bend to his will. Our amicable past will do nothing to change what has happened and I scramble away when he lets me go.

“No.  _ No _ , you don’t, and I  _ won’t  _ help you. I am almost prepared to murder you just for showing your ugly bucket here.” I threaten, although the threat is barely stiff enough to twist my words into spite or anger.

“Shiha. You have to listen to me. There is no one else I can trust,” he murmurs. I soften, staring into the blackness of his visor. Nostalgia sweeps over me in one fell swoop and I lean against the wall with a huff. “I am sorry.”

“Let’s get a drink, Mando.”


	2. the hunters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a drink is shared. a few punches, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many thanks for reading and interacting :,)
> 
> i promise it will get more interesting!!!

The cantina is dark and dank. It’s full, though, the conditions hardly enough to scare away half of Mos Eisley’s population and not nearly enough to take away from the dirt cheap drink prices and the perfectly working pod race screens above the bar. I order a sunfruit liquor shot and take a seat opposite Mando in the furthest booth from the door.

“Are we going to talk about it?” I ask, thanking the Aqualish bartend when he delivers my drink with a thud. Mando sits silently, sulkily staring at me through that black visor of his. Sometimes I wonder whether it's worth sacrificing the colour of life for a Creed, a promise. “Okay.” I take a long sip of my liquor. “What do you need from me? I’ve got something good set up here.”

“I need you to come with me, help me find… I have a foundling in my care.” I raise an eyebrow over the rim of my glass. Mando seems hesitant to talk about it, much unlike a normal Mandalorian clan father. “The Empire is chasing us halfway around the galaxy.”

“ _ Why _ would the Empire be chasing you? And a  _ child _ ?” I pause, running a fingertip over the glass in front of me. “What about your wife? Your clan mother?” It’s a tentative question and it hangs in the air before Mando shakes his head.

“I do not have a wife. It is me and the child, alone.” I stare at the table for a moment, exhaling heavily onto my drink. “I need you. You are the only one I can trust that can be spared. The only other people I know that I’d trust with this child are inconvenient or are bound to another duty.”

“And you assumed I was not bound to my duty?”

“There are pucks on you.” I stop drinking, just for a moment. I knew this. That’s why I asked him if he took my name on a puck in the alleyway those minutes ago. I chew on my lip. “You cannot stay here.”

“I want to stay here. What I can and cannot do is not your choice, Mando,” I whisper, sharply. The cantina door opens and three bulky warriors walk in. One bears the armour plating of a stormtrooper down one arm. A trophy for a well-won victory. He’s huge, with broad shoulders and a fierce scowl. Human, though, the other two are Devaronian. Brothers, by the looks of it. “I am trusted here. No one would take a puck that I know of.”

“It’s not them I am worried about.” I frown. Mando should not be worried for me. He gave up that privilege years ago. “There are men on Nevarro holding your name on pucks. There are women on every planet imaginable holding your face on their pucks. Every time I see it I feel a duty to come to you.” His voice is low, harsh.

“How did you know I was on Tatooine?” 

“A friend told me. Peli Motto, she manages Hangar 3-5. I asked whether she’d seen a Kage-Human hybrid and she said everyone calls you the ‘Seer’,” he mutters. His helmet bobs against his chestplate. “Do you help the bounty hunters?”

“Yes. I cannot hunt on my own anymore, so I help others.” 

There’s a moment of still, scratching silence. I think it's a regret that he’d like to voice, but I know he’s too scared to say it, or at least, there’s something that stops him saying it or anything at all.

“Peli has my child with her.”

“How did you come into contact with your foundling? Did it come from the covert?” I ask mildly, finishing my drink. The bartender looks up but I shake my head firmly. Those three hunters turn my way one by one. 

“No. He… he was a quarry. I decided to not fulfil my contract. It got me ejected from the Guild but everything’s fine now. I can hunt as I please, but… I have a mission.” I stare blankly at him.

“The child in your care was an asset? He was a bounty puck?” Mando shakes his head. “Not a puck, then? A face-to-face? You have to be joking. This is a unique way to bring a foundling into your care. How young is he?”

  
“A baby.”

“Oh, D- Mando.” I rub the space between my pale brows with a finger. He notices my stutter between names. We long lost the honour to call one another by the names we offered so freely, but he had little else to call me. It’s fair enough. I suffer with his voice speaking it softly in silence. “There might be a problem.”

The hunters at the bar are staring right at me, one shifting forwards, a hand on his blaster, or at least on the holster.

“There are three bounty hunters standing at the bar right now, staring. Two Devaronian, one human.” Mando huffs through his vocoder. My eyelids flutter shut.

“I’ve had enough of Devaronian for a while. I had a run in with one on a prison-break job not so long ago.” I smile, although the action is as faded as wet ink, and I settle in the shocked silence when Mando’s helmet shoots towards me. “Are they still looking?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t panic, cyare.”

“Don’t fucking call me that,” I hiss, sliding a hand to my blaster. The hunters move at the bar and I go at the same time, standing and shifting until I fade in with the pod race-watching crowd. All three of them start panicking, a little mildly, and they approach Mando in the booth. He knows, though, that this is practised. We did this a few times when we worked together. He would be the fishing line, I would be the simpering, sexy bait. It always worked.

Mando doesn’t turn his head at the two Devaronian bordering him, but he shifts violently when one knocks a hand against his helmet. He springs into action at the disrespect of the simple gesture. I move back forwards, dissolving into reality once more, and the crowds begin to disperse as Mando makes clean work of one red-skinned Devaronian. The human male spots me and lunges forwards. I sidestep his bulk and flip out my blade.

It nicks a line along his forearm, drawing thick rivulets of blood to his pale skin. I push the blade through the middle of his shoulder blades like bantha butter when he refuses to be quick enough to turn on me and abandon him there, bleeding helplessly, to leap on the Devaronian currently pinning Mando to the table with one meaty fist. I bring my blade down through his shoulder and force him into a furious stance as he faces me. His lunge forwards is clumsy and I sidestep him with ease, lifting the blaster I left on the table to shoot him twice in the back. 

“Shiha,” Mando grunts. The human wraps an arm around my waist and throws me through the air, leaving me to clatter onto a table and break it in half. “Shiha!” I’m winded, and the human male, ginger and beardy, grabs me around the throat, squeezing firmly. I choke, eyes going wide. He’s too heavy, I can’t move him- Mando can, and he does. The release comes like a literal breath of relief and I leap to my feet.

Mando’s metal cable is slung around the man’s neck, and I take the opportunity to sink a blaster bolt into his chest. He drops, smoking and dead, to the cantina floor. The bartender appears over the bar once more and returns silently to cleaning his glasses.

“That’s the first time it’s almost worked.” I cough, bending over to regain my breath. “First time and only time. I can’t help but wonder if my luck arrived with you, Mando.” I spit out the inch of blood from the Devaronian’s careless back hand. “I’ll come with you.”

Mando goes stiff.

  
“One condition.”

“Anything.”

“I will be safe.” Mando’s helmet tilts. “Good. Okay. I just… as long as we’re on the move that won’t happen again.” The meaty fist of that human has winded me enough I’m almost needing a sit down. “Don’t think I’ve forgiven you, Mando,” I call to his beskar-clad back and the shroud of his cloak. He pauses. “I won’t ever forgive you.”

“I know, Shiha.” He disappears. 

I nod once at the bartender and disappear, too, like I always have and always would.


	3. hyperspace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's time to leave tatooine for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not everything is going to be factually correct but im trying my hardest i swear...

I don’t say goodbye to Kima. I don’t have to. She nods at me and hugs me and goes back to her work. I know I’m always welcome back here, that the table will never have a use and that she’ll tell everyone that comes looking I’m searching for a new perch to roost in, that Kima will always love me somewhere in her heart.

She is a kind woman and I am a cruel soul for leaving her.

I enter Hangar 3-5 with as little expectations as one has rooting through dumpsters behind Coruscant cantinas. The place is dusty, a little rundown with plates of stone coming off the walls in little crumbled piles but I know Peli is around as soon as I see three tiny pit droids scuttle into my view. I grin at them and they bump into one another to chirp for Peli.

The woman comes around the corner in a bustle of bushy brown hair and stern features. 

She smiles, though, a little off-handedly, when I raise an unimpressed brow and move forward into the light. My hair is probably three times as blonde as it was when I left Nevarro all those years ago, and if Mando is around, he might not have properly recognised me at first. 

“Sorry,” she says. “For tellin’ him where you were. I kinda owed him a little, or at least… I  _ thought  _ I did. He didn’t seem like he wanted you for a hunt, though.” She plops herself firmly down on one of her huge, metal crates. I blink at her petite form. “How are you, anyway, Shiha?”

“Me and Mando go back a while. It’s alright. I haven’t seen him in years, though.” Peli huffs. 

“Doesn’t seem like the  _ friend  _ type.” She nudges one of her sleeping pit droids with a foot and it pops to life, rushing to the otherside of the hangar. “Shame we couldn’t have had a game of sabacc before you went. Mando said you had to go quick, or something. He’s in the Crest.”

I stare at the ship.

“How is the old beast?” I ask, slapping the metal side of it with a firm hand. It rings and I’m a little surprised the whole thing doesn’t just fall off under one simple pound of my palm. Peli pulls up her little datapad. “Not good?”

“She’s okay, I guess. Mando doesn’t want a full revamp or full repairs… I don’t know. He’s got the kid on there, though, sweetest little thing.” She goes into a rant about the baby and my interest is piqued when I spot a little green goblin at the foot of the ramp, waddling towards me. “Oh, there he is!”

“This is… the child?” I stare at it as it approaches, grimacing when its tiny hands tug firmly at my brown leggings. It’s cute, yes, but it’s certainly not what I expected. “He is…”

“He is a strange little fella, huh?” Peli scoops him up with a warm smile and extends him to me. I blink blankly but take the baby into my arms nevertheless. This is not a Mandalorian child. This isn’t the normal foundling. I doubt the ears would fit into any helmet and I doubt the baby will grow much taller, either.

“Peli-  _ Shiha _ .” Mando stands at the top of the ramp, glittering in all his beskar glory. I blink up at him, thrusting out the little green baby in my hands. “Foundling.” I sigh, touching one of the child’s ears with a fond smile. “Did you get what you needed?”

“Yes.” I hold the baby haphazardly in one arm, shifting back and forth on my feet to await another response from the stoic, silver warrior. He stares at me, or at least, I think he is. Sometimes I can feel his gaze burning on me like a match to skin, but he doesn’t seem to move, not for a minute. Peli clears her throat and I jump back to action, the kid in my arms. “Child.” I hold it out, much to the small boy’s- I think- displeasure. He coos when his father takes him back in his grasp. “We leave soon.”

“Shiha-”

“I won’t speak again.” I move past him into the ship. It’s like a nostalgia trip. The ladder up to the top deck is still that same rusted colour and there are still two feet outlines on the third from bottom rung. I painted that rung and stepped on it in the next moment. My fingers brush the cool metal. It’s cold in here. He’s never been able to sort the heating system- maybe I’ll do it for him on the next planet we stop at.

The air still has that soft, amber and spice smell, like wandering into a food market. It smells like him, I realise after a moment. He’s said something to Peli and then pounded the button for the ramp. It moves an inch at a time, the old rust bucket Razor Crest not quite up to her usual standards. 

“You brought your staff.”

I touch it with the tip of my finger. It didn’t usually make an appearance. I tended to rely on my more common weapons, like my vibroblade and blasters, but the pure beskar staff was a memory for me that I didn’t like to leave behind. With one button-press the ends would shift into double spears. It was good for non-lethal combat, too. 

“Yes.” I move it into my hands. With one somber glance at the Mandalorian’s helmet, I bounce the tip of the staff off his pauldron. It rings through the metal carcass of the Razor Crest with a blissful melody. “It has been with me since we parted ways.” I smile at the sleek, endless stretch of silver it leaves. “I haven’t used it in a while, though.”

“You honour the Creed by carrying it.” The words are quiet, a whisper on the wind, and I wonder if he even says them when the silence settles once more. “I’ll pilot us into hyperspace.”

“Where are we going?”

“I have a puck.”

I crouch, stuffing my pack into a forlorn corner of the bay. Mando watches. I don’t know if he wants to say anything about the way I slide it in and cover it with a sheet, but he turns away and ascends through the hatch above his head. He’s left the child down here. A bit careless, it seems.

The green thing stares at me with huge, inky eyes of starlight. His hands go out and I immediately sweep him into my arms, settling down between two crates full of something heavy as Mando begins the start-up sequence. The Crest rattles and shakes beneath my feet and my legs, shivering as she takes flight. This old beast is lucky to still be anywhere near airborn, ancient but sea-worthy as a Quarren ship. I lean my head back and feel us leave the atmosphere. The baby coos.

“Hello,” I greet, smiling softly. “Shiha.” I tap two fingers against my chest and the child’s ears twitch, his hands going out to pull firmly on my white-blonde hair. I wince, letting him do as he wishes when the ship suddenly sinks backwards. Hyperspace comes next, with a rush of my stomach. It has been a while since I’ve been off solid ground. 

I hear the boots through the deck above and then a gruff call.

“You can come up. There is something to eat. Bring the kid.”

I wobble a little when I stand but eventually I’m righted, waddling uselessly over to the ladder. I let the child cling to my arm as I ascend onto the second deck. My face almost hits into the beskar covering Mando’s leg. He’s standing right at the hatch.

“Be careful,” I grunt, moving onto my feet. He’s tall, but I’m nearly as tall as him. Lean muscle lines me and I am quick, but his strength has always been astounding.

“Give him to me.” He holds out his hands.

“You shouldn’t leave him down there on his own. Have you no idea of childcare?” To my surprise, he shakes his head. It’s a simple gesture, but I stand quietly for a moment just staring at him. He fishes the child from my arms and pushes me gently down into a seat at a tiny table. It’s funny, sitting here. I see his bunk. The blankets are folded, the white sheet clean. It all smells delicious, manly and rough. There’s another bunk behind me. It’s the medical bunk but it looks clean enough. There’s the cockpit, too, with flickering controls and the two comfy seats we used to ride in together. I think he notices me staring. 

“You can fly with me if you feel more comfortable being able to see the stars.”

There’s no stars to be seen right now, just the faded blue light of distant hyperspace. The yellow light above our heads shines plenty onto the small plate of food. It’s a tiny slab of bantha steak that he’s made on that little fold out kitchenette. I smile when I look at it- it’s like he used to do. The pepper is thick and delicious, the tiny folded potatoes grilled and crispy.

“You haven’t changed.” I dig the fork into the meat and shovel it into my mouth. I haven’t eaten since yesterday night. That’s not true- I had a glass of blue milk this morning and a slice of melon, then the drink at the cantina. I’m lucky I’m not a lightweight. I swallow a spear of steak whole and beam up at Mando’s expressionless helmet. This isn’t how it usually went.

We would have eaten alone, or at least away from each other in the ship, at speaking distance but without being able to see each other. 

“Thank you,” I mumble through a mouthful of food. He turns away without another word, leaving the child on the small seat opposite, fiddling with a tiny silver ball. I stare at him without regret, watching as the baby starts giggling. It’s cute. “Does he have a name?”

“No.”

“Okay.” I return to shovelling the rest of my meal down my throat, finishing with the Lah’mu greens. They’re salty and fresh. Mando must have gone there recently for something. A bounty, perhaps? Nothing proper grows on Lah’mu unless it is tough enough and unless it is left unexposed to the planet’s rather harsh conditions, and I expect it’s probably a good planet for targets to run and hide on, in the huge black mountains and the caverns that had no end. “Where are we going?”

“Asusto.”

Strong with the ‘dark-side’ old women said and particularly popular with smugglers and bounty hunters- it makes perfect sense the quarry is hiding somewhere in that damn forest planet’s mass. The surface is jungle and forest so tall and so thick that sometimes heat signatures couldn’t get through. There’s evil moss that can trap you if you walk too fast or too hard on it.

“Is it worth it?”

“Four thousand credits if I deliver him back to Chaaktil.” I raise an eyebrow. That’s a pretty hefty reward for a quarry. “An Imperial there wants him. That’s why I need you. Keep the kid safe while I deliver.”

“From the Empire?”

“Yes.” I fiddle with my now empty plate. Mando hesitates in the cockpit for a moment before slumping down in the pilot’s seat. I probably won’t get much more out of him for the rest of the trip. We were once good friends, better than that, but now he seems more closed-off. More protective of his child. 

“I’m going to sleep.”

No response. I lift myself from the chair and collapse onto the medbay bunk, letting sleep and the everlasting hum of hyperspace draw me into the safest sleep I’ve had in years. Tomorrow, Asusto.


	4. past is past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> once, they were closer than friends, closer than lovers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short past snippet lmaooo kinda exciting no?

**Some time ago.**

“Mando,” I call. He’s working on something on the workbench, the fizzle of tools and spark visible off his red-slathered armour. It’s chipped, but when he turns away from the bench I see one of his pauldrons. He’s heated a little spare beskar to heal the divot left by a sniper bolt just off of Corellia. The quarry is in carbonite now.

I turn with a smile, holding out the staff. It’s brand new. The Armorer handed it off to me as a gift for bringing honour to the Clan after a hefty bounty that ended up paying for most of the foundlings’ food and drink for the coming winter months on Nevarro. Although the land was hot there, there was ash fall and snow in the winter. 

“It’s beautiful.” Mando turns back to his work. He’s not one for conversation. Three years of partnership showed that, but we were close enough as friends and partners I didn’t need his conversation. I knew he valued me somewhere beneath that big old beskar covered head. “I’ve never seen the Armorer so pleased with so many credits before.”

“Imperial credits are worth enough these days to get anyone anywhere,” I respond in kind, hitting the tip of the staff off of Mando’s broad back. He flinches but I hear a rough huff beneath his vocoder- he laughed at least. We’d eaten only ten minutes before but I was hungry again.

This is the fourth hyperspace jump we’ve done in a week. There are four bounties holed up in the carbonite freezer in the hold.

They were fun ones: a female Twi’lek charged with assault against a Senator had given us quite the chase through some healing baths on Naboo until we’d got her with a tranquilising net- watching Mando ignore her passes on the way back to the Crest was rather amusing; there was a male Weequay avoiding tax from a tyrant on a faraway planet that was hiding out on Nal Hutta, I still haven’t gotten the stench from my other set of clothes; there was the burly Klatooinian that Mando had dispatched in three punches to the back of the head while he was falling over after a failed sneak attack and there was the dopey little Theelin with her grappling hook that had given me quite the chase. 

My thighs still burnt from it, from hopping across dilapidated rooftops in the centre of Corellia. She was being charged for three counts of murder on Imperial assets and two on Imperial officers by a still-standing crew of them on some long-lost planet in the Outer Rim. Mando let himself get shot by her friend. The woman, I don’t know what species she was, but I managed to kill her in a jump with a blaster to the back of the neck. Mando had luckily taken the shot to his armour.

Idiot.

I grin to myself. He doesn’t see. I smooth two fingers over the shaft switch and let it shimmer into a double-ended spear. Pure beskar held up against lightsabers- the age old weapons for a more civilised age that had long fizzled into non-existence until Luke Skywalker brandished one against the evil Emperor and toppled the Empire into a crumbling pile of nothingness.

Mando looks over his shoulder.

“How are you holding up,  _ Din’ika _ ?” I ask, sliding the spear into the sheath on my back. His shoulders shake in a half-laugh. “Other than being shot by a Theelin bitch.”

“I like it when you call me that,” he huffs, turning from his work. I give a coy smile and punch him in the arm. “Really makes this partnership feel more like you bossing me around.” He’s carefree at the moment, in between jobs with plenty of pay coming in.

“You know it’s not like that, Din.” I smooth my hand over his shoulder. “It’s you bossing me around- you got pretty angry when I almost lost that Theelin, didn’t you?” His body moves with a huff of laughter.

“I’m never angry at you, though, am I? I still let you do what you want, hm?” He leans forward, knocking his forehead against mine. I smile at the touch of beskar and relax backwards into the loading bay seats with a sigh. The ship whirs through hyperspace with a rush, rattling the ancient sides of the ship with wicked speed. “Should we go back to the covert after we deliver these to Dosuun?”

“I think we should go find some fun. I heard the Twi healing baths on Ryloth are quite the sight,” I tease, spreading my legs out along the seats beside me. We’d made some modifications to the Crest in the better part of the year and now it was more homely than a metal can in the sky. 

“You know I don’t care for healing baths.” Mando moves forwards, his hands moving over my hips as he crouches. “We should settle down somewhere for a bit.” I stare at him, blankly. “Vows.” I straighten with a giggle.

“But don’t you like hunting? I do.” I flex my hands, staring at my nails for a moment. I’m gloveless on the ship, relishing in the mechanical warmth of a newly repaired heater. “Let’s go back to the covert after we get these to Dosuun.”

“You’re pulling away from me.” His grip is magnetic on my knee as I go to move, and his fingers move to my face. I put my hands over his on the coolness of my own helmet. 

We look similar in the right light, our helmets just as simply made as one anothers. Mine had a more gold-tint to it, though, not pure beskar but mostly. Only a drop of gold was needed to shift the colours.

“I don’t want you to regret showing yourself to me.” The words hang. The sentiment is real and true and I watch as his helmet turns away from me, just for a moment. He’s a hypocrite, really, with his own form of pulling away. I hold his bare hands tight between my own. It’s the only sliver of skin we’ve shown each other, really, that’s not in pitch-black darkness, and his hands are roughened by our trade. They’re golden brown and soft on the joint between wrist and hand but rough on the knuckles and the palms with their own map of imperfections. “It’s fine. I just need a little more time- we both do.”

“ _ Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum _ .”

“Din…” I knock my helmet against his with a hum, my fingers slipping beneath the lip of his helmet, brushing against the bare, hot skin of his throat. He groans, leaning forwards into me. As Mandalorians, we are both hunter and prey. I feel like we’re hunting one another sometimes, like his touch immobilises me as efficiently as a tranquilising net. “Wait, wait.” He pulls his hands away, quietly, and simply rests his forehead against mine. We sit like that for some time until the hyperspace begins singing its dues, and we stand as one. “Let’s go deposit these bounties, Din’ika. Then we can talk.”

“ _ Ka’rta _ ,” he says. Heart. “ _ Ret’lini _ .” He taps his chest plate and then mine and whisks himself away up the ladder. _ Heart, just in case _ . It was like he knew what was going to happen- good or bad. I stand silently for a moment after he’s gone. 

Just in case.


	5. forest of doom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the hunt begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ne'ta kar'ta: black heart  
> shabuir: insult (idiot but like................... bad)

I leave the ship first. The trip had been quiet, silent, and Mando had even had the gall to shut the cockpit after an hour or so of my intrepid silence. I didn’t want to speak to him, particularly, here only for the credits and the safety of the ship. I knew this place, still, like the back of my hand, and with every waking moment I retraced memories I didn't know I had.

After a few hours in the bunk, sleeping, the child had woken me. I suppose Mando, even after my warnings, still wasn’t sure on why he shouldn’t leave the child alone under any circumstances. He’s… the child is cute. Too young to be anything more intelligent than cute, or anything less intelligent than a baby. I stare into the ink-blue oceans of his eyes for a while, smiling and touching his ears to keep him occupied. He’s got a weird little silver thing in his fingers, like a ball or a bearing off of something and I wonder if he’s done something that’s about to make the Razor Crest dissolve.

My boots sink into moist earth and I heave a breath of the nearly untouched land. It’s fresh, tickling the back of my throat with the sweetness of pure water and the refreshing shiver of ice. I press my hands to the ground beneath me and suck in two more breaths of the clearness ahead of me. My head tilts to the sun, rosy, but not so evil. It’s a cool sun and I thank myself for bringing my cloak. 

My fingertips slide through the delicate, dew-drop encased purple petals dropped along the emerald masses beneath me. They are softer than silk to the touch and belong in rich and fancy places like Cantonica rather than on some bounty-ridden planet. The trees are taller than Coruscant’s cityscape, with low hanging branches and threads of rope-moss. Each step I take has a strand touching my shoulder.

Luckily, I’ve read enough on Asusto that the evil mosses I know of. They are a sickly, pale colour and lie beneath tree roots rather than out in the open. When triggered, they suck the victim beneath the trees and digest them.

I pluck a single pink flower from the purples and raise it to the sun.

“It has been many years since I’ve seen such life.” Mando pauses by the ramp, where he’s tried to creep quietly, but the thud of his boots gives him away. In a sash at his hip, the baby stares at me. I almost laugh at the huge eyes peeking through burlap brown, but I don’t. Mando would pull back from my conversation.

“How long were you on Tatooine?” I shrug, the exact number lost to me.

  
“Two and a half years.” I tap my cheeks. “That is why I don’t look so pale anymore. My Kage is barely there except for these hellish roots.” I gesture at my hair. It glows white in the light, like a beacon through the moss and trees. “I should cover it up.”

“Don’t.” 

The word stops me halfway through the adjustment of my cloak hood.

“I’ll… I’ll shoot you instead of the bounty.” I huff, smiling to myself as I fasten my hood up with the weighted front. It means it doesn’t fall forwards or backwards at all. Hunting cape. 

“It would be a worthy kill, Mando,” I mutter, raising my MK rifle into my hands. “I haven’t hunted for a while. This will be amusing.”

“I doubt your skills have waned. We always… It will be fine.”

I gesture for Mando to follow me. This was how it usually went. I’d take up the front on the forested planets with plenty of cover, or the jungle planets, those planets where people could hide in the foliage and life I knew so well.

  
“The yellow-green around the tree roots will pull you under. Do not step on it. Throw a rock or a stick to trigger it.” I point at a patch of moss beneath a haggard tree root. Mando looks at it, his helmet shining in the sun. “We should have done this at night. You’re a huge target with that beskar.” I grin a little to myself and slide low to the ground. There’s footprints. The tracking fob had suggested the last location he and his Imperial chip had led him was back where the Crest is, locked up and chained down. “Footprints.”

“Biituian?” I shrug.

“Hard to tell from a footprint but there are two toed shoes like they wear on Biitu.” I tap the still wet shape in the mud before me. My finger traces the line of the shoe. “It could be them or it could be someone else just moving through the forest. Asu Port is that way,” I murmur, pointing left through the jungle. “And Jarum Settlement is that way.” I point in the other direction before straightening once more. 

“He is quick on his feet, they said.” My ears prick at the twitch of a branch somewhere off to our right. I turn my head sharply to catch the movement, but there is nothing promising, only the flash of a bird through the roughened trunks of ancient trees.

“We’ll need to wait until night. I track better at night and you will be harder to see.” I flick a finger against his beskar, striding back towards the ship at breakneck speed. “Inside.” I point.

“I… I know that.” He taps a button on his gauntlet and the ramp begins to descend. I watch it with eager eyes and the baby sticks his little green hands through the bag with glee when his home starts to reveal itself. I wait and ascend in three steps, shrouding myself in the darkness of the lower deck. I shed my staff, my rifle and tuck myself into a corner. Mando stands there, staring, as the ramp begins to close once more. “Are you going to stay here?”

“What else is there to do?”

Another pregnant, waiting pause.

“Play a game of sabacc with me.”

*

“This is cheating.” I used to play this with a helmet on. He couldn’t see my poker face, but now I’m exposed as a newborn. “I don’t know how to hide a poker face from you.” I scrunch my nose, laying my losing hand flat on the table.

“That’s what they all say.” Mando… his shoulders shake in laughter. He’s laughing at me. I scowl, leaning back into the rather uncomfortable metal chair on one side of the tiny dining area and fold my arms. “Another?”

“We’ve been playing for hours.” I glance out of the viewport. It’s still early evening, nearly at the end of the afternoon with the sun streaking through the last quarter of the day. The ball of fire follows an arc neverending, painting the sky a solid gold as it descends. “I don’t want to face another loss, thank you.”

“You will learn.”

I turn, raising an eyebrow at the nonchalance of his words. He stares right back- I think he does- beneath that beskar bucket.

“Learn to be without my helmet?” I ask. I cannot avoid the ice of my tone, and neither can he, his helmet turning in a twitch away from me. “I fear to say that I have already learnt, Mandalorian.”

“Shiha…” his whisper is low. “I didn't mean to infer… I didn’t mean it.” I let the wall be my view, now, instead of the huge form of the Mandalorian, who’s regret does not shine like his armour. “I’m sorry.”

“No. No, there was never sorrow…” I begin, tone low and seething. “There was never sadness, was there? You did what you did, you did what you _wanted_ to do and what the Creed willed.” Another silence follows. “I adapted.”

“I should have been quicker.”

“You should not have been so soft,” I hiss. “It was my own mistake.”

I see flashes of it now, of my helmet hitting the ground and the silence that followed, the sudden heartbreak that split me, the shock and the realisation that my life was over as I had known it. The bounty had been too quick.

I remember the feeling of hands against my face, under the lip of my helmet, and then sunlight kissing my skin. Bare. Uncovered.

I wipe away the forlorn tear- this is not a place, nor time to cry about past sorrows and the mistakes of another life. Mando notices, taking a solemn step forwards.

“I should not have done what I did.” His helmet shakes. “I should have simply put that helmet back over your head and said my vows there and then. I was- I… felt deeply for you.” I laugh, cruelly, really. “We can speak of something else.”  
  


“ _Please_.”

I chew on my cheek, no longer finding the appetite to converse. There’s something else about it, too, feelings long unspoken of, ones that are often a lot easier to be kept under wraps rather than be opened to the sky. I blink, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. Mando suddenly looks at the ground beneath him and lifts the giggling child into the air.

My gaze is uncovered as I stare. It is funny, really, to see him in such a position, smiling and pretending as if nothing had happened then, now, or anytime at all.

“He’s a good kid.” I glance at Mando, now slumped in his seat he had previously taken. “I… he was my asset. A long while back, on Arvala-7. I don’t know where he came from or where he belongs, but my mission is to find his people.”

  
“Mando…” I stare at him through soulful eyes. I know how he feels about the child in his arms- like it is his blood and flesh sitting right in front of him. Even behind the metal of that silver bucket, his resolve is see-through. His desires are like transparisteel in the air. “You won’t take him back.”

“I will.” His tone goes all gruff. “You are questioning my loyalty to my Creed.” 

“I did no such thing,” I hiss in response. “That child is your son. You are an idiot to believe giving him up will solve any of your beskar-coated self-doubts. You idiot. God, Mando, you need to just…”

“Do not tell me what to do.” He’s settled the child in his floating crib already. I scowl. 

“I will tell you as I see fit- you are being an idiot. _Shabuir_.” His hand shoots forward through the air and I sidestep, grabbing him by the wrist. “Coward. You deserve no Creed if you are to give up your child for the preservation of your rules.”

“Our rules.” His fist grabs my hand and pulls, tightening his grip until I reel into his chest. My breath fogs up the visor of his helmet, blanching obsidian-black into a foamy grey. “They were _our_ rules.” Mando’s vocoder sounds much more visceral up close, scratching and forlorn. “And you were careless enough to break them.”

I growl, raising my knee and hitting him square between the legs. I slap a hand ferociously off the gleaming dome of his head and let him fall, pinning him there with a knee and a fist. 

“You will never speak of this again. You act as if you forgot… that you forgot you looked at me once, twice, then left me in the dust.” I ignore the tear streaming down my left cheek. “You forget that I watched this awful ship’s busted ramp raise and disappear as you left me there! You left me on Tatooine, you fucking prick!” I smash my fists against his beskar with a roar. “I loved you!”

“Cyare,” he rasps.

“Don’t you fucking dare.” I whip out my vibroblade and hold the tip against his exposed throat. “Call me that again and I’ll drain you of your blood.” He speaks no more. “ _Ne’ta kar’ta_. To mention my dishonour. To mention my past is of the greatest disrespect.”

“Shiha Por,” he drawls. “Shiha Por, you have my heart.”

I leap backward off of him and escape, locking myself in the bunk furthest from his with a solid slap. The darkness encases me and for once, I am happy. Alone.


End file.
